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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24792136">i'll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyscaleCourtier/pseuds/GreyscaleCourtier'>GreyscaleCourtier</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Delirium, Explicit Language, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Sickfic, Spoilers for up to Episode 132, Whump, the two worst characters to put in a h/c fic are the two i picked, they bros</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:47:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,425</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24792136</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyscaleCourtier/pseuds/GreyscaleCourtier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Buried adventure.</p>
<p>Jon runs a fever and Daisy does her best.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist &amp; Alice "Daisy" Tonner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>256</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i'll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/gifts">taylor_tut</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from a fall out boy song i may or may not have misheard. it's hard to tell bc it's fall out boy lol</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>

<p></p><div class="">
  <p>Daisy folds her arms and watches the rain come down.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She doesn’t hunker. She’s far too tall to hunker. Nor does she huddle, loiter, or god forbid mope. But Basira has been in the library for the last four hours, reading something about astronomancy. Not astronomy, or astrology, or necromancy, but Daisy guesses some combination thereof. And if Daisy didn’t sit still for long before what Jon snidely calls her “time-out,” she certainly doesn’t now.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>So she stands under the overhang of the Institute and watches the rain, shifting her weight from one leg to another, and decidedly doesn’t think about moaning coffins and the smell of wet soil.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Fortunately there’s plenty to smell out here. Daisy draws an experimental sniff. Cigarette smoke on the wet wind. Coffee from the little shop on the corner. The sweet, sickly reek of a pedestrian’s dangerously high blood sugar as they scurry past under an umbrella. Lamb’s ear in the window box three floors up next door, bobbing happily in the rain.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>When her still-shaky legs start to let her know they’re at their limit, Daisy turns and goes back inside.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Rosie gives her a quick, tight smile as she passes the reception desk. How much does Rosie know, Daisy wonders? Not like she’s going to ask, but she probably has some batshit theories, at least.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Progress to the Archives is slow, painful, and quiet. (Most things are quiet around here now. Jon says it’s been that way since the Lukas bloke took over.) Tim: dead. Martin: either in Peter’s office or, hell, half the time he’s not in there either. Basira: astronomancy. Melanie... god knows where.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>So she winds up making the slow, painful walk to Jon’s office, considers knocking for a moment, then decides she doesn’t care and goes in.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The Archivist’s office usually smells like a few things. Paper. Pen ink. The hard plastic of cassette tapes. Jon’s herbal soap that Daisy likes but won’t ever admit to.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But there’s a wave of something that crashes over her when the door opens, and the way her spine stiffens has nothing to do with the way Jon jerks back from the filing cabinet with a “Christ! Do you mind knocking?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah,” Daisy says, because she does, actually. “You all right?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon shoots a glare in her vague direction before returning his attention to the filing cabinet. “Fine.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Why the bitching, then? You quitting smoking again?” Daisy doesn’t see the point, privately. There’s a thousand things that are more likely to kill any of them before any cancer turns up. She doesn’t say that, though.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“‘S my office and I’ll bitch if I want,” Jon says, but he seems only half paying attention now, digging through drawers with a purpose. He doesn’t even seem to be reading any of the files.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy takes the moment to sort through the evidence. A new smell, something that smells — she doesn’t know — it smells hot, and dry, like fingernails. Salt, too, like prey that’s run terrified, sweating from its paws but only making itself easier to track.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>No, she scolds the blood. None of that.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>A plain mug of earl grey tea sits untouched and long gone cold on the edge of Jon’s desk. It’s not even on the coaster. That’s... weird.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And now Jon is digging through a filing cabinet, apparently not even looking for a file.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“You sure you’re all right?” Daisy asks, cautious and falsely casual. The cop voice.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yes, Basira, it’s fine,” Jon snaps. He slams a drawer and whirls back to the set of shelves against the back wall.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Fucking—what?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He barely looks up.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Red flags. Red flags everywhere. “Sims,” she says, louder now, putting authority into her voice. (Her legs desperately want her to sit down, but Brian from physical therapy says it’s good to push them sometimes, and pushing herself is what she’s always been good at.) “What are you looking for.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s less a question and more a demand for attention, and Jon doesn’t seem to notice. “The - extinguisher. The CO2.” He digs through a box full of tapes. Now that she’s paying proper attention, Daisy can see his hands shaking.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The CO2 rings a bell. Daisy remembers the Prentiss case. Not with much clarity, but she remembers writing up the brief. Not that it does much for her budding concern. “For what?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon finally seems to register her there and pauses his frantic search. He blinks. (Glassy eyes, flushed cheeks. If Daisy didn’t know better she’d wonder if he were drunk. Not that she’d blame him. But she’d be able to smell that.) “The... sorry, what?” There’s a blurry edge to the words, like he hasn’t slept in days.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy weighs her options, and then calmly, slowly, limps over, takes the Archivist by both shoulders, and in a quick and fluid motion she’s shoved him down into the desk chair.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He smells like ink and hard plastic and herbal soap and fear. Someone else’s, or his own; what’s the difference. “Sims,” she says, placating now but no less firm than before, “what’s going on?” The hot-dry-salt smell is rolling off him in waves.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon sort of looks at her and sort of looks through her. “Tim might know,” he mumbles. “Should ask him.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Right,” Daisy says. “So — is this a breakdown? Someone drug you?” She picks up the mug and gives it a cursory sniff, then a sip. Just cold tea.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon makes another valiant attempt at getting up. Daisy nearly drops the mug, settles it on the desk, and plants a hand on Jon’s chest, just under the thin pale scar she’d left there so long ago. And then it all clicks into place.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Are you running a fever?” is the first thing out of Daisy’s godforsaken mouth, and then she doesn’t wait for an answer because he’s clearly about to deny it and he’s clearly radiating heat under her palm, so she cuts off whatever bullshit he’s about to give her and puts her face right in his hair.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Now that she’s paying proper attention, it definitely smells like sickness. Hot and dry and salt — of course that’s what a fever smells like. Jon manages a weak swat at her shoulder. “Daisy — god’s sake, move.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She does, but not because he told her to. “Thought the Ceaseless Fucker was healing you,” she says, and then grabs Jon’s phone off his desk. (She still doesn’t have one of her own. She’s supposed to go pick up a new one later this week. She’s dreading it.)</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“‘s fine,” Jon says without any weight behind it. He blinks a few times and seems to focus on her face. “Daisy?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah. If you call me Basira again, we’re gonna have a fight. Now what’s this about? You... what, you need a statement? Or—” she trails off with a vague gesture in one hand, the other tapping out a text to Basira.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Don’t think so. It doesn’t... feel like that.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The fact that he’s admitting something’s wrong is another big red flag. He put up hardly anything resembling a fight. “Right,” Daisy says. “So what does it feel like? Cause it looks like shit. By which I mean you look like shit.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Dunno. Blurry.” He’s starting to slur again, eyes glazing over.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy considers her options, and decides to email Martin. He’s dodging her calls lately — he’s dodging everything from everybody, actually — but she hopes he’ll give her some pointers anyway. Caring for people isn’t really Daisy’s strong suit. She goes to pocket the phone, realizes she’s wearing the comfy pants without pockets today (fuck), and just crams it into her bra instead. “Blurry,” she repeats. “Yeah. Okay. C’mon, I’ll put you on Basira’s cot. You’re clearly not gonna rest until someone makes you. So I’m gonna make you.” She privately hopes he can take more of his weight than he looks. Her knees are really starting to threaten to give out.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>-</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He doesn’t, frankly, and it’s a ten minute trek between the two of them staggering between filing cabinets and mismatched shelving space and one instance of Daisy banging her hip against the corner of Melanie’s desk hard enough to make her swear violently into Jon’s hair. But they get there in the end.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“There.” She dumps him on Basira’s cot with little ceremony. “If you’ve got the energy to try and get up, don’t, cause I’m out of energy and I’ll just have to start throwing shit.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon mumbles something from the cot.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“What’s that?” She shakes out a few paracetamol from the bottle she keeps in her pocket. (She goes through them like candy lately. It’s not clear if it’s something to do with her weird metabolism, or the Hunt, or if she’s just frying her liver and she’s going to pay for it down the line. If there is a down the line.)</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon’s head lifts from the coarse wool blanket. “Worms,” he repeats in a vaguely stronger voice. “Did you check?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Sure. Yeah. No worms.” Gods sake. She’s left her water bottle in the library. “Can you swallow pills dry?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“But, did you check.” Jon makes as if to get up.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah, yeah, I checked,” Daisy says, dropping the pills and the bottle on the uneven stack of boxes Basira uses for a shitty nightstand to hurriedly shove him back down on the cot. “Stop that, you need to sleep.” Honestly, though, Jon’s sudden lack of energy is a heel turn from the near-frantic state from earlier, and Daisy can’t quite decide which concerns her more.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The phone dings from her bra.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The email’s so sterile you could do surgery with it. Daisy puzzles over it for a moment wondering if there’s some kind of hidden message in it, or if Martin really is just... that distant these days. He’s certainly not the scared subordinate she interrogated some lifetimes ago. Then again, she’s not that detective anymore either, is she?</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“The CO2,” Jon mumbles, making another halfhearted effort to sit up. Daisy drops the phone on the cot and (gently, she’d consider) maneuvers him back down.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Don’t worry about the worms,” she says in what she hopes is a reassuring way. She tugs the blanket up in hopes that it’ll tell his subconscious that it’s bedtime. “Worms’ve fucked off. I’ll keep checking though, all right?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There’s a carefully casual knock. Basira peers around the open door. She’s got Daisy’s water bottle. (God, she’s so competent.) “Need anything? Besides my bed?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“You can have Melanie’s,” Daisy says halfheartedly.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Nah. Not sleeping soon anyway. It’s fine.” Basira hands over the water bottle. “He dying yet?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Don’t think so.” Daisy takes the bottle with a quick jerk of her chin that means thanks. “Don’t get your hopes up.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>That drags a low breath of a chuckle out of Basira. “Right. Let me know if... whatever. You know.” She makes as if to leave.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I, uh.” Daisy pauses. She doesn’t know how to do this. She doesn’t know how to do any of this. “A, a chair — could you? One of the desk ones?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Sure.” Basira vanishes. The door swings shut behind her.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Cause, just, my knees,” Daisy explains to the empty air. She sighs and picks up the pair of pills she’d gotten earlier. “Sims, sit up a minute.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“You just said,” Jon complains, a little more lucid than before.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah, look, just shut up and take these, all right? I don’t want to hear Elias bitching about finding a new archivist.” It lacks any real bite, especially as Daisy finds herself setting down the water to help drag Jon halfway upright. “Right — if you choke on these I’m gonna be angry.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The pills make it down without much fuss. The door cracks open and Basira’s desk chair rolls in before it shuts again.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Thanks.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Keep the Plaguebringer in there,” Basira calls back. “I’ll let Martin know.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I’ve emailed him, he knows.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Right. Then I’m probably going home. Text if you need anything.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Right. Thanks. For all of this.” Daisy gestures weakly at the chair even though the door’s closed.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah.” Basira’s footsteps retreat back into the archives.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>-</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy eventually has to go track down a fire extinguisher.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>For all she remembers of their time in the Buried, Daisy can’t recall Jon ever sounding quite so scared as he sounds when he wakes from a fitful half-doze and asks her for the ninth time if she’s checked for worms.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah,” Daisy says for the ninth time. “Got the CO2, even.” She hefts the canister up just enough to show him. “It’s fine, I’m not going anywhere.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon’s hair hangs in sweat-damp strands over his face, but Daisy can see his hazy eyes lock first on the extinguisher, then on Daisy’s face, and the worry lines seem to soften. “Daisy?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Still here.” She checks the time. He’s due for more pills, might as well do that while he seems conscious.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It... hurts,” Jon manages while Daisy shakes out four pills. (Two for him and two for her, because this desk chair is starting to take its toll on her spine.)</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah? What hurts?” She slips a hand round his shoulders and pulls him up a little. The heat under her palm is still astonishing.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“The... the knowing. I can’t... can’t stop it now. ‘s all coming in.” Jon presses the heel of his shaking hand against his eyes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I know,” Daisy says even though she doesn’t. “I’m sorry. Here.” She coaxes the pills into him and a few more sips of water for good measure.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>-</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy falls asleep around half past three. She doesn’t mean to, of course, but her circadian rhythm was rather cunt-punched by the Buried and frankly she hasn’t been sleeping much lately anyway. She wakes with a sharp inhale and a soft clunk of her shoe on the extinguisher by her chair.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The room smells much the same — of fever and sweat and herbal soap — but there’s a gritty-soft tang that reminds her of the ocean, that she can’t quite place. Not until she glances around the room and notices a gently steaming mug of earl grey on the floor beside the cot, and an old brown angora blanket draped over Jon’s sleeping form that hadn’t been there before.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The smile feels strange and rusty on her face, but in a good way. Guess Martin isn’t as detached as he likes to think.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Daisy stretches and checks the time.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Five minutes til four.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Well.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Not like she’s got anything else to do.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She stands guard there until dawn.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
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